Campuses Reflect Diversity of Society

In supposedly describing the state of free speech on university campuses, the cliche that Caroline Gina Miranda (“Campus Liberals Get Taste of Own Medicine,” Voices, Feb. 9) falls back on is that of faculty members and administrators isolated from society, sitting in their proverbial ivory towers. At Cal State Long Beach, with a student population of 33,000 who live, work and play in the “real world” and who come from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, there is hardly the segregation Miranda describes.

In this context, students and educators alike recognize that tolerance, free speech and the exchange of ideas are vital to higher education. Rather than reflect a segregation from American society, campus life reflects the diversity and openness of that society at its very finest. To that end, students make the school in the same way that people make society. I would not want it any other way.

Edgar Kaskla

Lecturer, Dept. of Political

Science, Cal State Long Beach

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Miranda’s somewhat vaporous case for indicting campus liberals for suppressing free speech doesn’t hold a candle to the long history of censorship and book burning by religious and political conservatives.

Things that have been banned by conservatives include Shakespeare’s plays and many books considered classics. Some conservatives even banned all the Tarzan books in Los Angeles in 1929 because it was reasoned that the fictional character Tarzan was living in the jungle with Jane without the benefit of marriage.

And lest you think that censorship on the part of conservatives is ancient history, remember that some conservative groups are now banning the best-selling Harry Potter books because they allegedly promote witchcraft and Satanism. (At the same time, the Harry Potter books have been credited for getting thousands of children interested in reading for the first time.)

And the last word: Webster’s New World Dictionary has even been banned by some conservative teachers because it contains some “objectionable words.”

Ron Whittaker

Joshua Tree